The present invention relates to a wall plate with a glass part for an elevator installation and to an elevator installation with such a wall plate.
By the term wall plate for an elevator installation there is to be understood, within the scope of the present description, plates for different boundaries of elevator shafts and elevator cars, thus not only plates for side walls, but also for floors, ceilings, doors or door panels, and windows. The components denoted as wall plates in that case do not have to be geometrically exact, but only approximately plate-shaped.
Wall plates of elevator shafts and elevator cars in many cases have at least partial regions of glass or glass parts, wherein the glass can be fully transparent or opaque.
Aesthetically appealing arrangements are achieved with, in particular, fully transparent glass and a contribution to user comfort can be made if a certain degree of looking out or looking in or looking through is possible. For example, the instantaneous stopping position of the elevator car can thereby be more readily recognized. An elevator user who is waiting can also see whether an elevator car is free or whether, in a given case other users with whom he or she does not wish to travel are in the elevator car.
On the other hand, as a consequence of such glass parts the user also obtains a view in and a view out which are not necessarily aesthetic. Moreover, in the case of certain users in an elevator car with transparent walls, which are arranged in a transparent elevator shaft, anxiety can also develop if the elevator car is located in the region of floors that are high up. In addition, users waiting in front of a shaft door can catch views of users in the elevator car moving past, which in a given case are perceived by the latter as unpleasant. All this could be avoided if only wall plates without transparent regions or without glass parts were used for the elevator installation, but the advantages created by wall plates with glass parts would thereby also be relinquished.
In order to combine the advantages of wall plates with transparent glass parts with the advantages of non-transparent wall plates there are known elevator installations in which the shaft doors substantially consist of a wall plate with a plate-size glass area, wherein there is used for the glass area a special glass which is known per se and the transparency of which can be changed as a whole in that it is subjected to electrical voltage. Depending on the respectively applied electrical voltage, the glass then appears as transparent or as opaque or non-transparent.
A disadvantage of that type of glass is that only the entire wall plate can be changed uniformly with respect to the transparency thereof, so that it is not possible to provide respectively adapted arrangements for different operating situations of an elevator installation.